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SPEECH 



F 



J 



JOSEPH HOLT, 



, ■) DELIVERED AT 



DEMOCRATIC MEETING HELD AT THE COURT HOUSE, 



IN THE CITY OF LOUISVILLE, 



ON THE EVENING OF THE 19TH OF OCTOBER, 1852. 



1^^ 



LOUISVILLE: 

HARirlKT dt HUGHES, PRINTERS, DEMOCRAT BUILDINQa. 

1853. 






/^ 



SPEECH. 



After a few introductory remarks, Mr. Holt con- 
tinued as follows: — 

Fellow Citizens: — In the observations, neces- 
sarily somewhat desultory, which I may have the 
honor of submitting to your consideration to-night, 
it will be my endeavor to confine myself to a dis- 
cussion of what I conceive to' be the true issues 
which have been for years, and I verily believe are 
still pending between the two great poUtical parties 
— discarding all personalities, as unworthy of en- 
tering into the controversy. And to such of our 
Whig friends as have paid us the compliment of 
being present on this occasion, I would say, in all 
frankness, that whatever of criticism or of denun- 
ciation may escape me, must find its interpretation 
in reference to principles, not men. To the Whigs, 
as a party, I unhesitatingly accord integrity and 
patriotism — nothing doubting but that they cherish 
their principles as sincerely as do I my convictions 
of the disastrous consequences to which those prin- 
ciples, if pursued, must ultimately lead. 

At the threshold, I must be permitted to say — 
which I do in no unkind or invidious spirit — that 
the Whigs have sought (and it is to be feared, but 
too successfully) to make the present canvass for 
the presidency, strictly personal in its character — 
thus concealing from the public eye, the real prin 
ciples which are boimd up with it, and which must 
abide its results. Hence their orators, so far at 
least as they have fallen under my notice, generally 
begin their speeches by relating a large number of 
very small and very stale jokes, upon the fall of 
General Pierce from his horse during the Mexican 
campaign, and immediately thereafter, they shoot 
forth, like so many blazing rockets into the heaven 
of heavens of oratory, in glorification of the mili- 
tary exploits of General Scott. This, so far as I 
can gather it, is about the sum total of the argu- 
ment — just as though the American people could 
be induced to decide the great and absorbing 
question of the Presidency of the Republic, upon 
grounds like these? If I do not follow the course 
thus indicated, of personal adulation on the one 
hand, and personal crimination on the other, it 
will be, first, because I have no taste for such 
things, and secondly, because, having entire con- 
fidence in the strength of our priticiples, and in 
the capacity of the people to understand and ap- 
preciate them, I, for one am willing, and desire 
that the canvass, shall proceed and be determined 
upon these principles — whose fate it involves — and 
upon them only. 

As far back as the light of history or tradition 
conducts us, two great political parties have been 
found to exist in all ages and countries, claiming to 
be at all civilized. These parties stand out from 
the pages of history, as distinctly and boldly as do 
any mountain peaks from the undulating plains on 
which they cast their shadows. They are, in their 
nature and mission, essentially antagonistic; and 



though their names have changed with the tastes, 
the caprice or the necessities of the times, and their 
forms have been modified by the pressure of sur- 
rounding circumstances, yet the animating temper 
and purpose of each, have ever remained the .same. 
The one is the party devoted to power — the other, 
the party devoted to the people. The one responds 
to the Conservatism of the nineteenth century — 
the other, to its Democracy. The one is based 
upon a distrust of the popular intelligence and in- 
tegrity, and a shrinking dread of the popular pow- 
er; the other rests upon an abiding faith in the 
head and heart of the laboring masses of mankind, 
whose toil and spii'it make up this world's wealth 
and glory — a conviction, that tlicse masses have 
the right to regulate their own destiny, and a sub- 
lime trust, that though delayed by the fraud and 
violence of tyrants, tlie day of their deliverance 
must ultimately come. The one party has ever re- 
sisted all change, all amelioration iri the field of 
politics, and often, of mere literature .uid science; 
has striven unceasingly to aggrandiz<' the govern- 
ment, and arm it with yet more ab.-olute powers. 
This end it has effected, sometimes by ,m open re- 
sort to arms, and sometimes by corrupt perversions 
of existing charters and compacts. Ai:.'.in,by the 
imposition of enormous burdens, and I'v cutting off 
all sources of information from the people, the 
masses have fallen an easy prey to the usurper, be- 
cause thus rendered impoverished, ignorant and 
brutalized. 

The Democratic party, on the other hand, have 
insisted and insist, that all government is, at best, 
but a necessary evil, and that, as a general rule, that 
nation is the best governed which is governed 
the least; that all political power should be delega- 
ted with caution and watched with unsleeping jeal- 
ousy; that all charters and constitutions in which 
such delegation is made, should be strictly constru- 
ed, and that those powers which are not conferred 
by the letter, but are only to be wrung from the 
instrument by imphcation, should not be exercised. 

The conservative party have sought their aims, 
not merely by an appeal to arms, by perversions of 
the fundamental laws, and by the alow, yet certain 
process of demoraUzation, but also by laboring to 
captivate the imaginations'of mcn,and by weakening 
and finally extinguishing all sense of personal con- 
sequence. Hence they have surrounded the gov- 
ernment with the pomp of vast armies; its high 
functionaries have dwelt in gorgeous palaces; its 
cities have been filled with monuments; its liveried 
officials have swarmed in the streets and upon the 
highways, (as in France, where there is an officer 
of state for every twenty souls,) its presence and 
multiplied agencies have been rendered ubiquitous; 
it has presided in the churches, at the theatres and 
at all the public amusements of the people — in a 
word, it has in a thousand ways, with more than 
the eyes of Argua, and more than the hands of 



Briareus, sought to intermingle its insolent offices 
with the afliiiis of social and private life. Men, 
thus perpt-tualiy overshadowed by this colossal 
power, and dazzk-d by its splendor, seem to them- 
selves, ill time, lo breathe through the lungs of the 
government, and exist, as it were, by its very coiir- 
teay. A conviction of helplessness creeps over 
them, and that self trust, which is the element of 
all that is truly great in our nature, being gradu- 
ally frittered away, they sink in appearance, as in 
fact» into mere motes floating in the sunbeams of 
political authority. In Europe, where Conserva- 
tism is almost universally in tlie ascendant, noth- 
ing strikes the American traveler so promptly and 
so painfully, as the sense of personal depeiidancc 
and personal insignificance, which everywhere pro- 
rails. This state of things is yet more lamentably 
apparent among the great minds of the Old World. 
The statesmen, philosophers, civilians and giants 
Iq the fields of literature, who in this country, ani- 
mated by a lofty self respect and a noble thirst of 
fame, would be building for themselves imperish- 
able monuments of renown, are there, but crawling, 
creeping parasites — devoting their lives and ener- 
gies to the interests of a few debauched men and 
•vomen, who claim that their feet were fashioned 
of God, to tread upon the nocks of mankind. 

The Democracy, assuming the opposite ground, 
contend that all government should be simple in 
its forms and administration; that it should be in- 
visible, except when invoked to protect the weak 
against the strong — the right against the wrong — 
that it should be without vast standing armies, or 
palaces, or espionage upon private or social life; 
ihat its glory should consist in the nurture of per- 
sonal sagacity, and enterprise, and consequence — 
in the strengthening of personal virtues, and ex- 
altation of personal character — in the develop- 
ment of all those qualities, which throw around 
the career of man, when freed from artificial and 
brutalizing restraints, so much that is beautiful and 
grand. Those arc the monuments, in which the 
government should make its boast — not those of 
aenselesa piles of marble scattered over the Euro- 
pean continent, inscribed with fulsome falsehoods, 
and on each of which have been wasted treasures, 
which distributed, would have made bright and 
happy a thousand humble homes. 

These parties being, as I have said, essentially 
antagonistic, the conflict between them has ever 
been maintained — often upon the battle field — 
sometimes in the popular assemblies — through the 
press and in the schools of philosophy; and when 
driven from all these theatres of human thought 
and action, the Democratic faith has still lingered, 
humbly, but in hope, in the bosoms of the lovers of 
;hcir land ami of their race. Its greatest triumph 
— unparalleled in it^ annals, for its completeness 
and splendor — was in the issues of the American 
Revolution, and the oraganization of our present 
constitutional form of government. So powerful 
were the guarantees thus furnished for popular 
rights, that it might have been well anticipated 
that the party of power would disappear forever 
from our shores. Not so. It came forth at once 
upon the political arena, and displayed those traits, 
for which it has been di&tiuguiahed through every 



peilod of its history. Clamorously urging, as i\ 
ever does, that the government was too weak, and 
fearing the power of the people, it openly assailed 
the fundamental principles of our institutions. Tho 
party assumed the name of Federalists, and 
through its instrumentality, our prisons were for a 
time hallowed by the presence of martyrs to the 
freedom of speech and of the press. Expelled 
fiom place, by the election of Mr. Jefferson, we 
meet this party again in the halls of Congress, de- 
nouncing the war, and sympathising more with the 
English constitution than with that of our Repub- 
lic. Yet again, we find the same party, under 
a new name — that of National Republicans — du- 
ring the administration of John Quincy Adams. — 
Profiling, however, by its past experience, and 
lowering its tone, it no longer attacks, for the mo- 
ment, the freedom of speech or of the press, but 
forms a gigantic system of measures, recommended 
by plausible and patriotic pretences, which, though 
slow in their operation, were sure in the end, to 
reach the same results, for which this party has 
ever toiled. Baffled once more by the election of 
General Jackson, the National RepubUcaus "shuf- 
fled off, ' in obedience to the command of their 
great leader, not their "mortal coil" but their name, 
and adopted that of Whigs — a name doubtless 
chosen as a bait to popular credulity, because con- 
secrated in our fatherland, by its association with 
much that is renowned in the struggle for human 
rights. But names are not things, as we shall 
have occasion to see. It will now be my endeavor 
by a rapid examination of the prominent measures 
of the Whig party, to show that, though modified 
in temper and tactics, by the "body of the times," 
and the peculiar institutions of our country, yet 
that it is in very deed the Party of Power, whose 
characteristics I have attempted to sketch — that it . 
is animated by its aggressive, centralising spirit, 
and that as such, it devolves upon us, as a duty of 
patriotism, to resist it. 

Among the boldest and most memorable of 
these measures, may b^ enumerated: a NationsJ 
Bank; a system of Internal Improvements by the 
Federal Government; a high Protective Tariff; and 
hostiUty to the Veto power; as conferred by the ■ 
constitution. 

You all remember something of the character of 
the Bank of the United States, and of the obsti- 
nate and angry contest, which resulted in its over- 
throw. I remember it right well; and, in my hum- 
ble judgment, that great Chieftain, General Jack- 
son, did not strike a more glorious blow for hia 
country, when at the battle of New Orleans, he 
smote the British lion in the face, and drove him 
howling fiom our shores, than he did, when ho 
grappled with and trampled to the earth, this po- 
litical and financial monster. You must well re- 
collect, in what an odour of sanctity, this institutioa 
had managed to enshrine itself with the American 
people — so much so, that when General Jackson 
breathed the first suspicion of its integrity, and 
threw out the first intimation that its charter should 
not be renewed, the National Republican party in 
mass held up their hands in holy horror, while he 
was denounced as a calumniator and a miscreant, 
as though he had slandered pure and helpless wo- 



man herself! But the old Chief's vision went a lit- 
tle bejoud the surface of things; and when in the 
might of his mission he laid his hand vipon that 
whited sepulchre, and tore away its covering, it was 
found to be filled with something worse tlian 'rot- 
tenness and dead men's bones.' The stench of its 
fathomless iniquities, has not yet died in the pub- 
lic nostrils. It grew like the Banyan tree, and as 
its branches, spreading in all directions, touched 
the earth, they took root — took root in the cupidity 
and corruptibility of men. When the question of 
its re-charter was moved, humble as had been its 
beginnings, and brief as had been its existence, it 
was found to have become already, as it were, a i ow- 
er in the state. It openly took the field against the 
government and the people — scattering its largesses 
broad-cast — and (passing strange to tell,) statesmen 
and orators, who had held wondering multitudes 
and listening senates entranced by their eloquence, 
while they demonstrated the unconstitutionality, 
and denounced the pernicious tendencies of this 
institution, were now found transformed into faith- 
ful attorneys and zealous champions, under whose 
advocacy, it proved, indeed, more difficult to sub- 
due, than 'an army with banners.' Like a Boa, it 
had wound itself around and around the entire 
body and limbs of the commercial and monied 
classes — toying with and caressing them to-day, 
and crushing them in its envenomed folds to-mor- 
row. These classes were heard, at one moment 
singing hosaniias to it, as to their temporal saviour, 
while at another, they were seen standing before it, 
stricken and cowering, as in the presence of an 
avenging Diety. They gathered tremblingly around 
its portals, and if they did not lay their bodies, they 
did their souls, in the dust before it, and shouted, 
if not from their lips, certainly from the depths of 
their hearts, in the abject language of oriental ad- 
ulation — "0 ! Bank, live forever." The picture is 
not overdrawn. Those who recall the terific scenes 
of agitation, alaim and suffei'ing through which 
this countiy then passed, when the very heart- 
strings of the nation, night and morn, were 
played upon by the felon fingers of this almost de- 
moniac institution, will say that in nothing do I ex- 
aggerate. The authoiity to charter a National 
Bank, the Democratic party hold to be no where 
granted by the Constitution; and even if such au- 
thority were conferred, as the institution has proved 
to be one of the deadliest foes to the purity of the 
elective franchise, ever known in this country, wc 
maintain that it would have been unwise and un- 
patriotic, to re-establish it. The power must be 
conceded by all, to be one of, at least a doubtful char- 
acter. Mr. Clay, in one of the most vigorous and 
luminous arguments of his life — an argument 
clothed with the noon-day splendors of an eloquence 
which time had not chilled or dimmed — pronounced 
it to be "a vagabond power," which had wandered 
from one end of the Constitution to the other, and 
had found no resting place. Yet this institution 
has ever been a darling of the Whig party, and 
its restoration is one of its favorite schemes — espe- 
cially is it a favorite scheme with General Scott, 
the Whig nominee for the Presidency, as disclosed 
in his letter of the 25th of October, 1841. It is 
true, that no mention of it is made in the Whig 



platform, as set forth at Baltimore — but for very 
obvious reasons. That platform was framed with 
reference to its availability, as was chosen the can- 
didate under it; hence this and other offensive 
measures, so often voted down by the people at 
the polls, have been adroitly omitted. But though 
omitted for the purposes of this canvass, rest as- 
sured, that it has never been abandoned. In proof 
of this, I need but remind you, that the last mo- 
ment the whigs had the majority in Congress, and 
were able to carry through tlicir cherished schemes, 
was during the administBation of John Tyler, and 
that they signalised that epoch, by the passage of 
a bill chartering a National Bank, which, but for 
the Veto of tlie President — to whom be immortal 
honor for it — would, with all its corruptions and 
despotism, be now tyrannizing over our country. — 
And there can be no better evidence of what a po- 
litical idol, a National Bank is wi h the Whigs, 
than the intense rancour and calumny with which, 
from that hour to this, that they have pursued the 
administration and fame of President Tyler. In 
nothing had he offended save this, yet uuto this 
very moment, his name is never taken upon the 
lips of whig orators, nor admitted into the columns 
of whig journals, but in connection with obloquy 
and execration. 

In supporting this institution, the Whigs are 
true to their instincts and missi^'U, as the Party of 
Power. It treads down the constitution, and while 
increasing overwhelmingly the volume of govern- 
mental influence, it substitutes for that popular 
virtue and intelligence, in which the Party of 
Power have never had confidence, an instrumen- 
tality of political rule, probably the most potent 
and certainly the most unscrupulous, which our 
country has ever known. 

The next flivorite scheme with the Whigs, is a 
system of Internal Improvements by the General 
Government. These improvements, according to 
the system as framed and insisted upon, were to 
extend, not merely to our harbors and rivers and 
great thoroughfares, but were to be made at the 
discretion of the Federal authoiities. They were 
to pervade every state and county and neighbor- 
hood in the Union, and the glittering bait would, 
in the end, have been laid at the door of almost 
every dwelling in the land. The system once be- 
gun, its progress would have been wholly irresis- 
tible. It would indeed have been as the letting 
out of waters — as the opening of a crevasse in one 
of the levees of the Mississippi — every day and 
hor.r of its existence, would have deepened and 
darkened the flow of the current and widened the 
spread of the inundation. You all nnist well know, 
how measures under such systems, are swept 
through legislative bodies. They move as vast 
snow-balls, gathering as they go — every project 
of every member, the great and small, the impor- 
tant and the insignificant, being thrown into one 
heap, and cohering together only by a common 
sentiment of plunder. Under the operations of 
such a system, the National Treasuiy would long 
since have been bankrupted ten times over; but 
this would have been the least deploiable result. 
The Federal legislature, and with it, vast masses 
of our countrymen, would have been utterly de- 



moralized. The employees of the General Oov- 
ernment, of every grade — and the links of the chuin 
would have heeu infinite— would have swai nied 
alonK our rivers, creeks, highways and by-ways, 
until every road to mill and to meeting, would 
have been shadowed by their presence and strewed 
with their corrupting largesses. You might as 
well attempt to unseat the eternal Andes, as to 
dislodge a paity from power, armed with a pa- 
tronag'e like this. Its armies of hirelmgs and de- 
pend;uits, bought and debased like the people of 
Europe, with their own money, would, at the bid- 
ding of the Government, have swept to the polls 
as au avaliinche, and who could have resisted them? 
General Jackson met this gigantic system at the 
threshold and arrested its onward progress, by 
his Veto upon the Lexington and Maysviile road — 
a highway in no respect national, but serving 
merely to connect two of the smaller towns of 
Kentucky. la his message returning the bill to 
Con"-ress, he laid down the doctrine to which the 
Democratic party have ever since adhered— that 
Buch improvements, unless strictly national in their 
character, cannot be legitimately made by the Fed- 
eral Government. For this, the Whig journals, 
during his administration, and indeed while he 
lived,°continued to heap upon him mountains of 
reproach. In this scheme, we have disclosed yet 
more boldly, the distinguishing characteristics of 
the Party of Power. Here is laid bare, until its 
palpitations meet the eye, the ardent desire ever 
che'rished by that party, to aggrandize the Govern- 
ment at the expense of the Constitution, to render 
it overshadowing in its magnificence, and ultimate- 
ly unlimited in its authoiity — thus introducing in- 
to our system, a venal and fearfully powerful in- 
strumentality of government, not based upon the 
virtue or intelligence of the people, but upon sor- 
did despicable appeals to their avarice and to their 
local prejudices. Yet this, in the estimation of 
the Whigs, is the grandest pillar in the temple of 
the Auferican system; and although again and 
a^ain overthrov.m by the vote of the people, the 
fanatics of the party may still be seen watering its 
base with their tears and throwmg their arms 
wildly around its shattered shaft. 

The Democrats insist that all these improve- 
ments, save the class designated, should be left to 
the states, or (which in the majority of cases would 
hi still better) to individual sagacity and enterprise. 
They would then be well made, cheaply made, and 
there would be no demoralization on the one hand 
or on the other. 

In passing, I must notice in this connection, an 
attempt to modify the Whig creed on this point, as 
exhibited in the construction of their late Balti- 
moic Platform. The framer? of that instrument, 
in issuing what claims to be the "last edition" of 
the Whig faith, in contempt of all the antecedents 
of the party, have deckred that the improvements 
made by the Federal Government should "in every 
instance be national and general in their charac- 
ter." Verily this annunciation must have sound- 
ed strangely, in the dying cars of the Father of 
the American system — the daring and unsparing 
leader of ihe remorseless crusade against General 
Jackson, for having vetoed an appropriation to 



the petty road connecting Maysviile and Lexing- 
ington. It may be safely affirmed that this modi- 
fication, which now sees the light for the first time, 
is altogether without authority. When we wish 
to know what the Whig creed is, we naturally 
look to the history of the Whig party; to its ac- 
tion while in power; to the messages of its Presi- 
dents; the speeches and votes of its leaders in 
Congress; the language of its most distinguished 
jonrnals; and in view of all these, I do not hesi- 
tate to asseit, that this resolution does not present 
the Whig f\iith, as it has ever been manifested, in 
its many and sore conflicts with the Democracy of 
the nation. It is a clap-trap modification made 
to meet the exigencies of the present canvass — a 
ladder destined to be kicked away, the moment it 
has been mounted. Who elected the Whig Na- 
tional Convention, and who are bound by their 
action? Nobody! That assemblage rose up as a 
mist of the morning, and like that mist, it has dis- 
appeared. If in after years, that party should come 
nto power, and this resolution should be quoted to 
arrest the progress of a system of Internal Im- 
provements without limitation by the General Gov- 
ernment, the reference would serve but to excite 
the sneers and laughter of Whig statesmen. Who, 
they would jeeringly ask, authorized the Baltimore 
convention to change the Whig confession of faith, 
which, like the law of the Medes and the Persians, 
altereth not? And who could answer that ques- 
tion? 

The Whig party advocate now, as ever, a high 
protective Tariff. This advocacy has, in part, for 
its foundation, one of the strangest delusions that 
ever laid hold upon the mind of man. It is this: 
that the true test of the prosperity of a nation, so 
far as its foreign commerce is concerned, is the 
proportion in which its exports exceed its imports. 
If, during the current year, this country should 
export to the value of one hundred millions of the 
products of its industry, which, on arriving 
abroad, should be sold for one hundred and twenty 
millions, and this sum should be invested in for- 
eign merchandise, which, on reaching our shores, 
should be found to be worth one hundred and forty 
million*, the nation, according to this doctrine, 
would have lost forty millions — being the excess of 
imports, and would be going at rail-road speed to 
rui . Stiange to tell, many an elaborate page of po- 
litical economy has been written in support of this 
error. It was distinctly recognised by J. Q. Adams 
in his fourth annual message, wherein he holds 
this language: "It is indeed, a general law of pros- 
perous conimerce, that the real value of exports 
should by a small and only a small balance, exceed 
that of "imports, that balance being a perma- 
nent addition to the wealth of the nation." If a 
"smiiU balai'.ce" could thus add to "the permanent 
wealth of the nation," a great balance, it is suffi- 
ciently clear, would necessarily make a correspond- 
ingly great addition to the national wealth! The 
"old man eloquent" doubtless died, a thorough be- 
liever in the proposition which he thus announced 
— a sad illustration of the enslaving power of the 
past, over some of the greatest intellects which 
the world has produced. As a corollary from the 
position assumed, the higher the tariflF, the more cer- 



tainly the amount of imports would be diminished, 
the excess of exports increased, and consequently 
the prosperity of the country, in the same ratio 
advanced — just as though it were possible for for- 
eign nations to buy our products, unless we bought 
theirs in return. This constitutes one of the 
foundations on which the High Tariff system 
rests. 

Another ground upon which this system is ad- 
vocated, is the patriotic pretence, that it is nec- 
essary for the American people to be independent 
of all other nations, in all tWngs — in humble imi- 
tation, I suppo.-e, of the Japanese, from whom the 
Whigs may have borrowed this magnificent con- 
ception. To this end it follows, that they should 
manufacture all articles of which they stand in 
need, even though the process should cost them 
double and treble the sum, for which these articles 
could be purchased abroad. Here the Party of 
Power, the pseudo aristocrats of the world, con- 
descend to play the demagogue. 
- The true ground, however, of the advocacy of 
■ this system is, that it furnishes through its sub- 
sidies, a vast power to the government unknown 
to the constitution, and builds up a numerous 
class, privileged above all others — enriched, ex- 
alted and almost ennobled, at the cost of the toil- 
ing masses of mankind around them. The mem- 
bers of this class, would liave multiplied thous- 
ands in their employment; these operatives must 
depend for their daily bread upon the pleasure of 
their employers, who even now, in the infancy of 
these establishments, drive them to the polls, al- 
most as cattle are driven over the fields. 'If these 
things are done in the green tree, what will be 
done in the dry?' 

The Democratic doctrine is: no monopoly, but 
protection alike to every class, guarding if possible 
with anxious care, the inc?c/)e«(/flMce o/aW. If, as 
some political writers insist, these gigantic manu- 
factories, with their attendant curses of demoral- 
ization and servitude, are the legitimate fruits of a 
dense population, let us at least not hasten the ad- 
Tent of an era in our history so dark and deplora- 
ble, by artificial means. Let us not force, in our 
hot-houses, the growth of the Upas, as though it 
were a flower of matchless beauty or a shrub of 
aromatic odour. 

In the three measures to which I have adverted, 
there is glaringly manifested the dominant spirit 
of whigery — a desire on all occasions, by the most 
latitudinons, I had almost said by the wildest con- 
struction, to add to the power of the Government. 
Thatsectof politicians would wring power from this 
tortured instrument, as you would wring water from 
a sponge. And here we meet our adversaries face 
to face, and glory in the position maintained by 
the Democratic party, of a rigid, unshrinking ad- 
herence, under all circumstances of pressure with- 
in and of pressure without, to the letter of that 
great charter of liberty- There is safety in noth- 
ing else. It is the break-water which protects the 
tranquil haven of social and political rights, from 
the waves and the tempests which rage without. 
Ilf the Whig party, judging from the past, could 
have the ascendency for fifty years, they would 
overwhelm the constitution of the Union be- 



neath a mountain of constructions, perver- 
sions and commentaries, just as the Jews have 
buried tlieir scriptures, beneath the traditions 
of the Talmud. The sentiment of_ profound 
veneiation for written constitutions, is a senti- 
ment nltogethcr Americ-m; it is unknown else- 
wheie in the world. Look at the people of France, 
certainly the most polished and possibly tho most 
intellectual of nations; yet during the existence of 
their recent short-lived republic, the language of 
their statesmen and journalists shows, that they 
had no more regard for their constitution, although 
adopted with all the forms and ceremonies which 
distinguished the adoption of our own, than they 
had for an act of ordinary legislation. You know 
the result. Let us then cherish this deep venera- 
tion, and exalt it, if possible, into a religioas sen- 
timent. But be assured, that just in proportion as 
you become accustomed to the continual violations 
of that instrument, to the continual exercise of 
doubtful powers wiung from it, and to the daily 
multiplication of those powers, will you weaken 
and finally extinguish in your bosoms the sentiment 
to which I have referred. If you would guard 
your constitution in all its strength and in all its 
purity, it should be hedged about in your hearts, 
as was hedged Mount Sinai, when it quaked and 
smoked and burned beneath the presence of the 
descended Deity. None should be allowed to ap- 
proach its flaming borders, and live. 

Such, however, is not the feeling of the Whigs. 
They have openly assailed and would sweep away, 
as would their candidate for the Presidency, one 
of the strongest bulwarks which the wisdom of 
our Fathers has erected for the protection of the 
constitution — I allude, of course, to the Veto pow- 
er. Gen. Scott, in his letter of 25th October, 1841, 
says: "I hope by an early amendment of the con- 
stitution, to see a reduction of the President's ve- 
to" — and snch is the hope of the party who have 
selected him for their standard bearer in the pres- 
ent contest. For myself, it must be confessed, 
that I love the Veto power — first for its origin. — 
You remember, when the laboring masses of Rome, 
who enjoyed but little share in the government, 
were oppressed beyond endurance by the upper 
classes, they retired to Mount Sacer, in open re- 
volt, and refused to return until their grievances 
were r3dressed and a sufficient guarantee given for 
their future protection. The result was the ap- 
pointment of several officers, called Tribunes, who 
represented the people, and by whom, all laws af- 
fecting popular rights, were to be approved, before 
they could be carried into execution. If the Tri- 
bune regarded the measure proposed, as encroach- 
ing upon the freedom or interests of the people, ho 
responded in the language of that day: "Veto," i. 
e. I forbid, and the measure fell to the ground. — 
This is the origin of the Veto power, and it is en- 
deared to me, because associated with one of the 
grandest movements in behalf of popular rights, 
which history has recorded. The President of the 
United States is the Tribune of the American peo- 
ple. 

I love this power also, because of what it has 
accomplished for the country in moments of great- 
est peril to the Republic. During the administra- 



8 



tions of Jackson, Tyler and Polk, it 13 well known 
that its exercise, and that only, saved the land 
from the scourge of a National Bank, and from the 
cankering curse of that system of Internal Im- 
provements, upon which I have commented. Our 
government, you perfectly understand, is one of 
checks and balances, and in this, consists its beauty, 
its strength and its superiority over all the govern- 
ments which have preceded it. The patriots who 
framed it, threw around the constitution — justly 
regarded as the Palladium of all our political bless- 
ings — three distinct walls. First, beginning with 
the outer — are the two Houses of Congress; next 
is the President, armed with the Veto power, and 
lastly, is the Judiciary. Over all these walls a 
breach must be made, before the constitution can 
be successfully invaded. But the experience of our 
country proves, that, of these three walls, the out- 
er is most accessible and least to be relied on. — 
Bill after bill, most flagrantly unconstitutional, has 
been carried through Congress, and it has devol- 
vod upon the President in the exercise of his 
sworn duty, to arrest them. Why it is so, it were 
perhaps needless here to inquire. It may be, be- 
cause, finding as we do, that the fidelity of public 
servants is generally proportioned to their sense 
of responsibility, as this responsibility is divided, 
80 the force of its consciousness is correspondingly 
diminished. A mob will commit outrages, which 
no single member of it, would dare attempt; so 
a legislative body will sometimes enact laws under 
the same feeling, which no one member unsup- 
ported, would have the hardihood to urge upon 
the country. In the President, who stands alone, 
we have a concentration of the highest sense of 
responsibility — and the history of our institutions 
shows, that with him too, has been found the 
highest measure of fidelity. In wielding this 
power, against which the Whigs have sought to 
excite so much jealousy, he acts, not as Queen 
Victoria or as any other foreign Prince or Poten- 
tate would do. He acts not for himself, nor his 
family nor his caste, but for and as the agent of 
the people, by whom he is chosen, and to whom 
he is directly responsible. When under the in- 
fluence of profligate combinations, or passion or 
panic, the outer wall gives way, and the storm and 
the billow are sweeping madly on, the President 
takes his stand, and in the name and strength, and 
clothed with the majesty of the American people, 
he says to that storm, "be still," and to that billow, 
♦'thus far shalt thou go and no further." Again 
and again, that voice has been heard in the hour 
of darkness and of threatened national disaster, 
and again and again the wild wave has rolled back 
at its bidding, baffled and broken, and the sunlight 
of peace and safety has again bathed the turrets 
of our blessed constitution. Who is here that 
would tear this power from our Chief Magistrate, 
our fdithful representative, and fling the charter of 
our liberties beneath the feet of a reckless, passion- 
led majority of Congress? 

There are those who think the Whigs are opposed 
to the Veto power, merely because it has been ex- 
ercised by Democratic Presidents, and in arrest of 
favorite Whig measures. Not so. That hostility 
has yet a deeper foundation. Ours ia a goveriunent, 



I have said, of checks and balances — a most em- 
barrassing and inconvenient form of government, 
for the Party of Power. Of the outer check or 
wall, they have no dread, having again and again, 
at will overleaped it. Could they but succeed in 
destroying the second wall — the Veto power — the 
third and last, the Judiciary — confessedly the 
weakest branch of t'.ie system — would soon follow; 
and then the Party of Power would have, what 
they have ever labored for — a government absolute, 
with no restraint upon the caprice, the interest, the 
passion, or the dark ambition of the hour. 

We are often told, in bland and coaxing tones, 
by whig journalists and orators, that there is no 
longer any real difference between the principles 
of the two political parties now struggling for 
mastery; and that as the public services and abili- 
ties of General Scott far exceed those of General 
Pierce — such is their assumption — the former 
should be sustained by even Democratic suffrages. 
Without pausing to measure the width and depth 
of the gulf impassable, which separates us from 
our political adversaries, I will state that I should 
be most happy to have pointed out to me, in any 
authorised edition ever issued of the Whig faith, 
or in any of the phases through which the trans- 
migratory spirit of that party has ever passed, 
aught, at all analogous to those resolutions of the 
Democratic platform, which declare that "Congress 
has no power to charter a National Bank," and 
"that such an institution is of deadly hostility to 
the best interests of the country" — that "justice 
and sound policy forbid the Federal Government to 
foster one branch of industry, to the detriment of 
any other" — "that the proceeds of the public lands 
ought to be applied to the objects specified in the 
constitution, and not distributed among the States" 
— "that the Veto power as given by the constitu- 
tion, should be maintained," — and that "the con- 
stitution does not confer upon the General Govern- 
ment the power to commence and carry on a gene- 
ral system of internal improvements." But espe- 
cially should I rejoice to find in the past of that 
party, something in harmony with the following 
Democratic resolution: 

Resolved, That the war with Mexico, upon all 
the principles of patriotism and the law of nations, 
was a just and necessary war on our part, in which 
every American should have shown himself on the 
side of his country, and neither morally nor physical- 
ly, by word or deed, have given "aid and comfort to 
the enemy." 

We wonld not wantonly play the resurrection- 
ist, and cause the deeds of our Whig friends to 
pass as 

"■ A slovenly, unhandsome corse. 
Between the wind and their nobility." 

yet it must be endured, that the Democratic party 
shall refer with pride and pleasure, to the part 
which they and their leaders played in that event- 
ful drama. It is profitable and just too, on the 
other hand, to remember the obstinate and bitter 
opposition which the whigs, as a party, offered to 
the Mexican war. The history of popular govern- 
ments shows that such a course of conduct, is never 
forgotten by the people. There is in my mind's 



9 



eye, a striking illustration of this fact. When our 
country, by sea and land, was engaged in a con- 
flict with a powerful and atrocious foe, when de- 
feat htjd followed on defeat, until every patriotic 
bosom was chilled, and every patriotic fireside was 
covered with gloom, there rose up in the Halls of 
Congress, one of the most gifted of her statesmen 
— but he rose there, not to counsel his countrymen 
with his wisdom, nor to comfort or animate them 
by his great eloquence — he rose to mock and to 
sneer! It is lamentably true; and from that hour 
his countrymen shrank from him, and, although 
for many years gone by, he has labored zealously 
in behalf of the Constitution and the Union, and 
those labors have excited the admiration and the 
gratitude of all, yet, unto this moment, he remains 
unforgiven. His fame and intellect tower before 
us, colossal in their proportions, but mournful in 
their isolation, as some pyramid rising amid desert 
sands. Over the arid waste that thus encircles him, 
there flows no current, there trickles no drop of 
tAe popular sympathy. So it must ever be. All other 
offences can be pardoned by the people, save this. 
Let the public man ridicule and denounce his coun- 
try, her measures and her statesmen, if he will, in 
the sunny hour of her prosperity, but when her 
children's blood is flowing upon her battle fields, 
and darkness and disaster have fallen upon her 
arms, he who then stands up in her councils with 
words of mocking and contempt upon his lips, 
hath written for himself a doom, which centuries 
of afler patriotic labor, will not suffice to reverse. 
So mote it be! Let young ambition, whether 
found in Whig or Democratic ranks, look upon the 
fate of this magnificent but wrecked statesman, 
and be admonished. 

We cannot recall without a blush, the terms in 
which Whig statesmen and Journalists reprobated 
that eminently patriotic war. One of them, now a 
member of the Cabinet, expressed the impious 
hope, that the Mexicans would "welcome our ar- 
mies with bloody hands and to hospitable graves" — 
while a leading Whig journal in Ohio, spoke of 
Gen. Scott as the "chief Mexican butcher in a 
land-pirate war." This is but a fair exhibition of 
the spirit, by which the opposition was character- 
ised. It will be urged in extenuation, that when 
the clash of arms came, the Whigs were found, 
«de by side with the Democrats, upon the tented 
field, and in the "red rift of battle." This is not 
denied. But it is a truth, and not the less so, be- 
cause announced by a poet, that 

"Thrice is lie armed that hath his quarrel just." 
This is especially true in this age, when there has 
been erected a tribunal, exalted above all princi- 
pahties and powers, to which men, and nations and 
sceptred monarchs, are ahke amenable — the tri- 
bunal of public opinion. When, therefore, the 
opposition denounced the Mexican war as unholy 
and piratical, they unnerved their country in the 
presence of that tribunal, tarnished the glory of 
her victories, and thus inflicted upon her a wrong, 
for which no daring on the battle field could ever 
atone. 

The war, begun and prosecuted by a Democratic 
administrntion, closed, and what were its fruits? The 
national honor was vindicated; another proof was 



given of the capability of our institutions to abide 
the shock of arms; another refutation was afforded 
of that stale calumny of kings, that great standing 
armies are alike indispensable for purposes of na- 
tional defence, and for the successful prosecution of 
foreign wars; an empire, in point of territory, was 
added to the Repubhc; the inexhaustible mines of 
California have been opened to American enter- 
prise, and the foundations laid of a commerce, des- 
tined to gather into its lap, the gorgeous treasures 
of the Oriental World. 

Before examining the claims of General Scott to 
the high office for which he has been nominated, it 
is proper that I should pay my respects to Presi- 
dent Fillmore. True, he is not a candidate for re- 
election, but as his administration has been con- 
stantly obtruded upon public attention, as em- 
bodying pre-eminently the spirit and graces of 
whiggery, and as, indeed, a very modi^l in its kind, 
it is altogether permissible, if not incumbent upon 
me, as such, to speak to it. Of the domestic as- 
pects of that administration, I will say nothing; if 
evil had been designed — which I am far from charg- 
ing — the overwhelming Democratic mnjority in 
both Houses of Congress, would have prevented it. 
It is to its foreign policy, over which that majority 
conld exert no perceptible influence, that I would 
invite your special attention. In treatins briefly, 
as I must do, this branch of our subject, no at- 
tempt will be made ot inflame your pas^^ions, but I 
shall content myself with the recital of a few well 
authenticated facts, leavmg it for you to draw the 
proper inferences. You, the people, are emphati- 
cally the statesmen of this country, and it devolves 
upon you, as a duty of patriotism, to think, to feel, 
and to act up to your proud position. You are the 
guardians of the national honor, a jewel, which, it 
left to the care of truckling and trimming politi- 
ans, must suffer, be assured, a fate calamitous in- 
deed. 

For many years, there has subsisted between Rus- 
sia and the United States, a treaty stipulating, that 
citizens of this country shall enjoy the same priv- 
ilege of entering the Russian Empire, and of trav- 
eling and sojourning there, as is enjoyed by Rus- 
sian subjects, within the territories of our Republic; 
yet, since the French revolution of 1848, His Ma- 
jesty, the Emperor, has thought proper to disre- 
gard this treaty, and American travelers have been t- 
met at the frontier and driven back, as men of in- 
famous principles and of suspected reputation. — 
Not many months since, Mr. Mann, accredited as 
United States Charge to the Republic of Switzer- 
land, called at the office of the Russian Embassy 
at Paris, and with this treaty in his hand, demand- 
ed, in pursuance of its provisions, that his passport 
should be vised for St. Petersburg. He was flatly 
refused, nor did the officer deign to assign any 
other reason for the refusal, than that such was the 
will of his Imperial master. It is true, that withm 
the last two years, there has been some relaxation 
of this insolent rigor, and Americans have been 
permitted to visit the Russian capital, upon the 
guarantee of the minister of their country, that 
they would be of good behavior— a. guarantee in all 
respects analagous to that required every day, in 
our criminal courts, of loafers, vagabonds and stroll- 

2 



10 



iag thicvLH. It is humiliating to know, that not ;i 
few of our foliow-citizens have been found willing, 
go f.ir to abase tlieniselves, a.s to comply with this 
condition. Thus, from month to mouth, and from 
year to year, in a poiut vital to the personal honor 
of Americans, and insulting, and designed to be 
so, to their republican principles, has this treaty 
been trodden under foot, not only with impunity, 
but without remonstrance and without rebuke. 

It may not be unbecoming the occasion, to in- 
quire who the Czar of all the Kussias is, and what 
itre the claims which he presents to the extraordi- 
naiy indulgence with which he has been treated 
by the present administration of our republican 
'rovermneiit. He furnishes in his person, the purest 
and most intense illustration of an Asiatic Despot, 
to be found on this side of the Bosphorus. His 
dominions spread over about one-seventh of the 
habitable globe, and he owns, as absolutely as does 
any farmer in Kentucky the cattle in his fields, 
some si.xty nii'.lions of human beings. lie asserts 
it as his high mission, to put down all revolutions, 
arid all popular systems of government; he has 
decimated Poland, and peopled the wastes and 
snows of Siberia, with the noblest of her inhabi- 
itants; he has crushed struggling and bleeding 
Hungary, and established everywhere the iron rule 
of Legitimacy: he has (to borrow a thought from 
Tacitus) viade Europe a solitude, aiid says that or- 
der reii/ns. His system of espionage, is, for its 
fearful ubiquity, without a parallel in the annals of 
the worst days of the Roman Empire. No subject, 
whatever his rank, can leave the Russian territory, 
without a written permission from the imperial gov- 
ernment, specifying the country or countries he is 
permitted to visit, and how long it is the will of 
the Czar that he shall be absent, and a default on 
his pa;t in either of these particulars, is sure to be 
followed by confiscation and exile. While jour- 
neying in Palestine, in the spring of 1851, I made 
the acquaintance of a Russian gentleman of fine 
intelligence and education, who was the bearer of 
one of tliese permits — "a pass" — to use the Amer- 
ican phrase — such as the slaves of the South carry 
when absenting themselves from their master's 
plantation. When in the course of our conver- 
sation, I spoke of the attractions of various local- 
ities which I had embraced in my tour, and urged 
him to extend his travels to the same points, he 
replied, that he would be most happy to do so, but 
that his limited term of absence was drawing to a 
close, and he had no alternative but to return. A 
cordon of police stations girdles the empire, vast 
as it is, so that no one, even with the assent of the 
proper officials formally obtained, can cross the 
line, without being met and conducted to one of 
these stations, where he is subjected to a series of 
interrogatories, as searching as they are degrading. 
He is compelled to disclose his name, age and his- 
tory, whence he cometh and whither he goeth, his 
business, kc, &c., and all these responses are care- 
fully recorded, together with the size of his mouth 
and chin, the length of his nose, the breadth of 
his forehead, and the color of his hair and beard. 
He ii not precisely cropped and branded, as are 
cattle in this country, but marks are thus put upon 
him, eiiually indelible. He is then turned loose, to 
have his footsteps dogged by a Russian spy, trav- 



elingwith him, wherever he may go, in the public 
conve yances, and sitting unknown at his side, at 
the tables of the hotels and boarding-houses. — 
This system is not confined in its operations to the 
empire,but embraces the civilized world. In our own 
land Russian spies reside, with the rank and pay of 
military officers, disguised, yet CTer active, serving 
as so many eyes with which the great Embodiment 
of Despotism, is looking into the heart of the na- 
tions. 

Such is the man, who, in violation of a solemn 
treaty, with hands ever red with human slaughter, 
dares hold up American citizens to public scorn, as 
unworthy to tread upon Russian soil. 

Soon after the French revolution of February, 
1848, the electric spark which had exploded in 
Paris, sped in hghtniug currents throughout the 
greater part of Europe, crossed the Alps, and flash- 
ing along the Italian coasts, might be seen blazing 
forth from many a mountain height, in the watch- 
fires of freedom — fires destined, alas, but too soon, 
to be quenched in the blood of those by whom 
they had been kindled. In view of this troubled 
condition of that portion of the Old World, the 
present administration issued a special order regu- 
lating the conduct of our naval forces in the Med- 
iterranean. What think you was its purport? 
In the defence of Capt. Long, published in March 
last, we have cited enough of this extraordinary 
document, or rather of the general order of Com- 
modore Morgan, based upon it, to know, incredi- 
ble as it may seem, that it forbade in the most ex- 
press terms, the officers and sailors to converse up- 
on thdr ships or on shore, loith each other, or 
with anybodij else, upon the revolutionary or polit- 
ical topics of the day; and further that it forbade 
them either by wordor act, toc/ive any intimation 
that they sympathised with either of the parties — 
those parties being, the people on the one side, 
and their oppressors on the other. Such was the 
bearing prescribed for American citizens — whose 
constitution secures freedom of speech to all — to 
to be observed on onr national ships, with the stars 
and stripes floating at their mast-heads. They 
were not merely struck dumb, but, by this order, 
were made to stand on their decks as miserable cat- 
aleptics, without power to move a muscle, lest the 
soul within should betray itself. Was this neces- 
sary, think you, to the preservation of our neu- 
trality? It cannot be pretended, apparent as it is 
to all, that this neutrality could not be violated by 
mere icords, wheresoever or by whomsoever spo- 
ken. As the wretched inhabitants of that country, 
naturally looked upon our banner unfurled in their 
harbors, with the same longing, anxious eyes, with 
which the desert wanderers of old, gazed upon 
the pillar of fire that lit up the night of their pil- 
grimage, methinks that had our officers or sailors 
met in the streets or lanes of the cities, any of these 
fugitives pressed by their human hunters, they 
might have taken them by the hand, or even whis- 
pered, "God speed," into their ears, without com- 
promising the dignity or good faith of our govern- 
ment. Not so, thought President Fillmore. But 
this apprehension of a breach of our neutrality, so 
ostentatiously put forth, was but a pretence, and a 
shabby one, at best. The true motive of this dis- 
creditable, and I would fain believe, unparalleled 



ii 



order, was a slavish fear of offenJiug, and a syco- 
phantic desire of winning the smiles of such regal 
monsters as the King of Naples, v.'lio was then 
pursuing his insurgent subjects as so many wild 
beasts, and who has since been engaged in driving 
and herding them by thousands in his loathsome 
prisons, where even now, amid untold agonies, they 
are languishing and dying, with no more care for 
them on his part, than you would have for so many 
rats shut up in your cellars ! 

When the frigate Mississippi, commanded by 
Capt. Long, with Gov. Kossuth on board as a na- 
tional guest, arrived at Marseilles, a crowd of boats 
came out from the shore filled with enthusiastic 
Frenchmen, who, gathering about tlie noble ves- 
sel, sent up their cries, not merely in honor of the 
illustrious Hungarian, but in honor, also, of our 
own loved land. One of this multitude, more ar- 
dent than the rest, drawing nigh to the ship, shout- 
ed, "long hve the United States," and as the burn- 
ing words escaped him, he threw a wreath of the 
flower called the immorlelle^ which fell upon the 
deck at the feet of the Commander, who, instead 
of snatching it up and pressing it proudly to his 
lips, kicked it contemptuously from his presence!* 
Under the stringent order referred to, he felt con- 
strained thus to act, lest he should give "intima- 
tion" of "sympathy" with French republicanism. 
This is one of the "examples," doubtless, by which 
the whigs propose "to teach the advantages of free 
institutions" and oxir devotion to them! 

The receipt at Paris of the intelligence of Gen- 
eral Taylor's death, was immediately followed by a 
meeting of the Americans resident and sojourning 
in that city, convened for the purpose of passing 
the usual resolutions of respect to his memory. — 
Mr. Rives, the Minister, being absent — as he gen- 
erally is, when his countrymen are to be met — the 
Secretary of Legation presided over the meeting. 
In the progress of the proceedings, a gentleman 
offered a resolution, declaring that Gen. Taylor, in 
the simplicity of his public and private life, was a 
model of the Chief Magistrate of a Republic. — 
The presiding officer representing the present ad- 
ministration, in apparent trepidation, begged that 
the resolution might be withdrawn, saying, he was 
apprehensive it might be deemed a rebuke to the 
French Government — Louis Napoleon having even 
at that early period of his career, surrounded him- 
self with the guilty pageantries of royalty. So 
earnestly was the request urged, that the mover of 
the resolution yielded, and thus a body of Ameri- 
can citizens, in the office of their own Legation, 
and, as it were, upon their own soil, were fright- 
ened from the assertion of a principle, true in itself, 
and especially dear to every republican heart. 

During the reign of Charles X — successor in 
name to Charles IX, infimously memorable for the 
massacre of St. Bartholomew's day — our country 
was represented, as now, at the court of St. Cloud, 
by this same Mr. Rives. It is the custom, as 
known to many of you, for the Americans in Paris, 
on the arrival of the anniversary of our National 
Independence, to procure a room, where, having 
assembled together, they seat themselves around 



* This incident is given on the authority of ao eye- 
witness. 



their table, and in the good old American fashion, 
amid patriotic toasts and speeches and songs, they 
recall their far-off homes and live over 
the blessed memories which cluster as an imper- 
ishable aroma around the 4th of July. To this 
festive board the resident minister from the United 
States is always invited, and is, indeed, the chief 
guest. On the occasion of which I speak, an in- 
vitation was accordingly extended to Mr. Rive?, 
but he declined attending; and why, think you, 
was he unwilling to be found in American compa- 
ny on a day so glorious in our history? "Becau-^e," 
said he, "I fear" — an ominous word to be found in 
the mouth of an American minister on the 4th of 
July — "I fear my presence will give offence to the 
French Goverment"f — that government consist- 
ing, be it understood, of the aforesaid Charles X, 
who soon thereafter was chased by his infuriated sub- 
jects from the throne, which he, and his ancestors 
for so many centuries,had polluted by their debauch- 
eries and their crimes. TheSaviour of t!ie world once 
said to his disciples, "Whosoever shall deny me 
before men, him will I also deny before my Father 
which is in Heaven." This is the true test of fi- 
delity; and that free people, by whatever name 
called, who, through their officials, shrink from 
an avowal of their principles in the presence 
of the enemies and revilers of those principles— 
the spoilers and oppressers of our race — are total- 
ly unworthy alike of the respect, of mankind and 
of the freedom which they enjoy. 

I have thus spoken, with no view of arraigning 
personally Mr. Rives or his Secretary, but have 
been induced to exhibit their conduct, simply be- 
cause I regard it as a fair specimen of the bearing 
of American officials abroad. The simplicity, the 
manhnees, and the glorying in the principles of 
freedom, which distinguished the earlier days of the 
Republic, have departed from this class of her 
representatives. American Envoys, Charges, and 
Consuls, with few exceptions, now bow as low as 
the lowest of the abject flatterers who crouch 
around European thrones, making everywhere, as 
they do, the impression that, however much the 
rabble of this country may be devoted to republi- 
canism, they themselves, the elite and the culti- 
vated, are heartily ashamed of it. 

Within the present year, an Araeiican merchant 
ship was fired into by an English man-of-war, oif 
the South American coast. I know not what 
words were deemed sufficient to atone for this out- 
rage. The circumstance is significant, as indicat- 
ing how humble must be the prevailing estimate of 
our national character, when subordinate officers, 
without any authority from their superiors, feel 
that they can with impunity, make at pleasure 
American vessels a target for their guns. 

During the difficulties connected with the inva- 
sion of Cuba by Lopez and his followews, an Amer- 
can steamer proceeding on her regular voyage, 
filled with passengers, commanded by a Lieutenant 
of our Navy, and with the national flag displayed 
at her mast-head, w:is fired upon and brought to, 
upon the high seas, by ajpctty Spanish vessel of 

t This anecdote is related on the authority of a gen- 
tleman long resident in this city, and who, at the timo 
spoken of, was attending the medical lectures in Paris . 



12 



war. If any atonement has been made for this, it 
has not transpired. Falsehood — I would not be 
BO harsh, if without it, I could be truthful — fidse- 
hood, I repeat, is an essential element of European 
diplomacy, and he who is most expert in the use 
of this weapon, is held to be the greatest diplomat- 
ist. Ilence those transatlantic Governments do 
not hesitate, through their minions, to insult ours, 
and the moment the matter is pressed upon them, 
they reply, "all a mistake," "sorry for it" — both of 
which are false, for it was no mistake, and they re- 
joice in it, and even while resorting to this paltry 
subterfuge, they are chuckling in their sleeve, at 
the large wondering eyes, and half-benevolent, 
half-stupid face, with which Brother Jonathan is in 
the habit of receiving these excuses. I do not 
scruple to affirm, that had General Jackson been 
at the head of this Government, instead of going, 
hat in hand, to began explanation of the authorities 
at Madrid, he would have despatched a war steam- 
er in pursuit, and would have returned gun for gun, 
aye, ten for one, if need be, wherever that insolent 
Spanish Man-of-war might have been found — be it 
upon the high seas, or be it in the harbor and un- 
der the shelter of the fortresses of Havana, It is 
thus, and thus only, that a nation so treacherous 
and so false, should be dealt with. 

Within a few days, the Crescent City, another 
American steamer, bound from New York for Cha- 
gres, arrived at Havana, where, under existing 
treaties, she had a right to touch; but, although it 
was blowing a gale at the time, she was met out- 
side the harbor, driven otf and compelled to pro- 
ceed in an opposite direction six hundred miles to 
New Orleans, where her passengers and mails for 
Havana were landed. Why this enormous viola- 
tion of private rights and gross National affront? 
Simply and solely, because on board of that steamer 
was a Mr. Smith, who, it was charged, though de- 
nied, had in the exercise of his constitutional rights 
as an American citizen, written and published in 
the journals of New York, certain reflections upon 
the brutal and sanguinary career of the Spanish 
authorities in Cuba. In that "ever faithful Island," 
you know men are garrotcd for speaking the truth, 
and this is an attempt to enforce the same code, in 
a modified form, in the United States, by muzzling 
the free press of this country. 
Very recently, too, the American barque Cornelia, 
while at .anchor in the port of Havana, was board- 
ed by Spanish officers, her mail seized, opened, and 
rilied, the desk of the Captain forced, and he him- 
gelf dragged a prisoner upon the shore. For this, 
as for all the other wrongs proceeding from the 
same quarter, there was not the shadow of provo- 
cation. 

Thus, from month to month, with every circum- 
stance of indignity, are the government and peo- 
ple of this country, insulted by the very basest 
of the Nations — a nation "born in rapine, and 
baptized in blood," with no passions, save an in- 
fernal lust of gold, and thirst for human carnage, 
and knowing no principlo of subordination, save 
the grovelling instincts of the craven and the 
slave. Yet none of these things move at all, 
the shrivelled and frozen soul of the present Whig 
Administration — no more than they would the 
sensibilities of a mummy, whose spirit went to 



sleep three thousand years ago, and of which 
naught but the pitchy cerements and grinning 
skeleton remain. Why are these things so? We 
hear of no such injuries being inflicted upon the 
commerce and seamen of other nations. Whence 
then is it, that all the shots fired and all the op- 
pressions suflered upon the Seas, are fiited to reach 
American ships and American sailors? I will 
tell you why. It is because — and I feel that as 
an American citizen, I could lay ray face in 
the dust for very shame and humiUation while 
I speak it — it is because, so timid and cow- 
ering has been the foreign policy of this govern- 
ment for years gone by, that in the estimation of 
other Nations, we are rapidly approaching that de- 
plorable state, in which individuals are to be 
found in almost every community, who, having 
lost all chai'acter for courage and self-respect, are no 
longer insulted by the brave and the bullying only, 
butlilly-livered cowards, timid though they be as 
hares, are found buffetting and spitting upon them! 
The arm of the untcrrified Democracy alone, is 
strong and bold enough, to snatch our beloved 
country, from the depths of this degradation. — 
And be assured, that if in the vindication of Na- 
tional honor, or in the fulfillment of its high des- 
tiny, that Democracy shall be called upon to plant 
onr standard upon the soil of Cuba and unfurl the 
stars and stripes upon the balmy breezes of the 
Southern Seas, England, France, Spain, and all the 
rest may bluster and bully as they will, but our 
glorious constellation, there once unrolled, shall 
never grow dim, but with each returning day and 
year, will wax brighter and brighter, until each 
star shall blaze as a Sun, over the startled empire 
of despotism, that now broods as an incubus of 
perdition over those beautiful lands. 

I object, lastly to the Whigs, their total want of 
sympathy with foreigners, — * not with foreign 
governments, nor with the titled and prosperous 
ranks of foreign society, but with those masses 
whose bitter lot it is to sow and reap not, and who 
stand every where in the presence of their Rulers, 
as "the sheep before her shearers." This want 
of sympathy, was fully manifested by the passage 
of the Alien and Sedition laws, by the instructions 
to the Commander of our Mediterranean Squadron, 
on which I have commented, is daily and hourly 
manifested in the bearing of American officials 
abroad, and General Scott spoke from the depths 
of a Whig heart, when he wrote his celebrated let- 
ter against the Naturalization of foreigners. It is 
true, that since his name has been mentioned in 
connection with the Presidency, the expression of 
his views on this point, has undergone a change. 
In the resolution on this subject, as found in the 
Whig platform, there is a mathematical precision, 
an iciness of detail, and a surgical sang froid, 
which, I confess, chill within me. The Whigs 
seem, as if with the very point of the dissecting 
knife itself, they would pick out, grain by grain, 
every seed of hope, yet left in the bruised but 
still palpitating hearts of European patriots. How 
does all this contrast with the letter of Gen. 



*To this, tliere are exceptions, at the head of which 
must bo ranked the brilliant organ of the Whig party in 
the i^outh WoBt— The Louisville Journal. 



13 



Pierce, addressed to a committe, inviting him on 
behalf of the citizens of Philadelphia, to join them 
in the celebration of the 4th of July past? Ho 
says: "It is pleasant and profitable to dwell on the 
associations connected with the revolutionary era, 
and especially is it just to remember, that the bree- 
zes, which then swept across the Atlantic, browjht 
us, not mereli/ empty professions of sympathi/, 
but treasure to support, and bold arms to strike In. 
our behalf.'''' It was nobly and gracefully said; and 
when I throw my eye back upon that eventful pe- 
riod of our history, when this nation, then a feeble 
colony crossed swords with the Mistress of the 
Seas in support, of human rights, and behold such 
men as Montgomery, Steuben, De Kalb, Koscius- 
ko, and La Fayette, "quitting their own" to stand 
on ours, to them "a foreign soil," and not merely 
to stand on it, but to water it with their blood in 
our defence, I can have no sympathy with, and 
but little respect for the framers of that resolu- 
tion. 

It is not to us as men or as Americans, that 
Crowned heads and Princes have and will continue 
to oifer indiirnities, but it is the popular institutions 
under which we live, that they seek thus to stigmatise 
and to weaken. In the penal code of Kings, republi- 
cans are felons; shall the tameness of our submission 
enable them to add, that they are cowards also? 
It is the mission of this Republic, to vindicate the 
truth, the respectability, the moral grandeur of 
the Republican principle, in the face of its foes. — 
As the serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, so 
did our fathers lift up that great principle, high 
above palaces and thrones, for the healing of the 
nations; and if, with folded arms and sealed lips, 
we now see the National law, by worse than Van- 
dal feet, trodden down, and the pale-faced, suffer- 
ing multitudes who wo-nld turn to that uplifted 
principle that they might live, stricken by tyrant 
hands to the dust, we are false to the solemn trust 
bequeathed by the past, false to duty, to glory, to 
nature and to nature's God. 

Fellow-citizens, I oppose the election of General 
Scott, first, because he is a Whig and boasts that 
he has ever been so; and secondly, because he is a 
military chieftain, in the strongest acceptation of 
that term. He has never held a civil office. For 
more than forty years, he has been attached to the 
army, and is, at this moment, at its head. For 
thirty of those years, profound peace prevailed in 
the Republic, yet, during all this period, none of 
the professions or avocations of civil life, had for 
him any fascination. He clung to his sword and 
his epaulettes — thus showing, that he was a sol- 
dier from choice, and that his spirit found in the 
military camp, at once the nutriment of its strength 
and the theatre of its highest gratifications. But 
say our Whig friends, did not the Democrats elect 
General Jackson to the Presidency , and what was 
he but a military chieftain? I answer that he 
was much more. At the call of his country, he 
led her armies to battle and to victory, but when 
"grim visaged war bad smoothed his wrinkled 
front," he returned again to the peaceful pursuits 
of private life. He was a lawyer by profession, a 
profound jurist, and distinguished as such, on the 
bench of the Supreme Court of his adopted State. 
He was a statesman of varied experience, and of 



matured, far-reaching views, and as such was 
known upon the floor of the Senate of the United 
States. From the records of history, and the 
grateful remembrance which his countrymen cher- 
ish of his services, you loarn that he was a milita- 
ry chieftain; but look at him as he enters the lists 
of rival Candidates for the Presidency. There is 
no sword at his side, no plume upon his brow, — 
he has thrown all these trappings aside, and comes 
forth to receive the suffrages of his fellow-citizens, 
unheralded by picture books, and songs of "Hail 
to the Chief who in triumph advances," simply and 
unostentatiously, as Ciucinnatus came from his 
plough; — not so, I am grieved to observe, with the 
hero of Lundy's Lane. 

It will be conceded, I presume, that not merely 
a statesman, but one of pre-eminent ability, and of 
thorough acquaintance with the civil departments of 
the government, is required to fill with success and 
honor, the Presidential chair. Now, although poets 
are said to be born such, statesmen are not; they 
are made — made by toil and study, by much ob- 
servation and prolonged experience in public af- 
fairs — made in the Cabinet and in the Halls of 
Legislation, not in the military camp. For it may 
be safely asserted, that the milit;iry camp has in 
all times been the nursery of licentiousness, of ar- 
rogance, and of lawless ambition; and although 
many statesmen have passed that ordeal of fiery 
temptations unscathed, no statesman's habits of 
thought or of action, were ever fashioned there. — 
Such seems to be the nature of man, that habits of 
command, continued for more than forty years, be- 
get, almost necessarily, a haughty, imperious and 
insubordinate temper. But this would ill become 
the statesman of any country, and most especially, 
the statesman, who should preside over this repub- 
lic, and be charged with the maintenance of its 
constitution. He should be thoroughly imbued 
with the spirit of that Constitution, which is 
the spirit of conciliation and , of compromise. — 
How much of this is found in the life of Gen- 
eral Scott, let his well known history an- 
swer. Mr. Clay, once exclaimed, "give us war, 
pestilence or famine, in preference to a blind and 
heedless enthusiasm for mere mihtary renown," and 
he refused his support to General Taylor, because, 
as he says in his letter of 20th Sept., 1848, he was 
"exclusively a military man, without the least ex- 
perience in civil affairs." 

But I will now read you an extract from the 
speech of a distinguished Whig orator, (Judge 
Johnston,) delivered at the late Niagara Celebra- 
tion: "He hoped," says the Reporter, "that the 
whigs would lose no time, but go to work manfully 
for the success of the Whig Part\ . He reviewed 
Scott's life, and compared it with the mihtary he- 
roes and rulers of the Bible, from Moses and Saul, 
declaring, there was c/rouud for the relujious prin- 
ciple in the world, that the man who takes life in 
battle, and sheds blood for his countrymen, shall 
RULK OVER THEM. He referred to Washington, 
Jackson, Harrison and Taylor, as instances of this 
principle. 

This is taking a bolder position than has ever 
been assumed by the Kings and Princes of Europe. 
They do, in point of fact, rule their subjects by 
the force of arms, but they have not the indecency, 



14 

openly to say so — they claim to govern them by 
the (jrace of God. But here the Presidency is dis- 
tinctly deiuaaded fo" General Scott, upon the "re- 
ligious principle," that he has won it by the sword! 
Turning away, however, from all argument and 
from the opinions of statesmen living or dead, upon 
the question, let us look for a moment into the past, 
for the fruits of the military caieer. I unrol before 
you the volume of Universal History, and what are 
ita teachings? Who destroyed the RepubUc of an- 
cient Rome? A military chieftain? Who over- 
threw the Republics of ancient Greece, enslaving 
that chivahic and noble people, and desolating their 
fair and classic lands? A military chieftain? Who 
swept away, as with a besom, the Republic of Eng- 
land, the only one which has ever taken root in the 
soil of our forefathers? A military chieftain — the 
treacherous and godless General Monk! Who sapped 
the foundations of the Republic of France, and ul- 
timately crushed it as an egg shell in his iron hand? 
A military chieftain! And who arc they, that from 
year to year, and from month to month, are carving 
with clotted swords,their way to every seat of power 
in tiie convulsed and degraded republics of South 
America? Military chieftains! Yes, fellow-citizens, 
if you will go back into the cemetery of nations, 
and walk there amid the tombs of all the govern- 
ments which have flourished and fallen before us, 
you will find that the sepulchres of the republics 
that have gone by, will strike your pained vision, 
as do the graves of the little children in our church 
yards. Some are scarce a span long — they seem 
to have perished in the first breath of 
their being. Othsrs have struggled on, in con- 
vulsions and inbbod, a few years longer, but how 
few, alas ! how fev/, have reached the glorious me- 
redian of manhood ! And over all these sepulchres, 
is inscribed the same mournful epitaph : "Died of 
the sword," "Died of the sword" — of that sword, 
which Judge Johnston, embodying the sentiment 
of the Whig pai ty, has told us has been destined 
from the days of Moses and Saul to those of Gene- 
ral Taylor, to rule mankind. Ah, is it not time, 
that mankind thus long ruled by iron and by steel, 
had risen in their might and shaken off their bond- 
age ? Is it sadly true, that in this matter and in this 
only, the chemistry of human experience is fated, 
never, never, to extract wisdom from the past ? 
Why is it, that in the nineteenth century, when 
the human intellect is exploring, as on the wings 
of the morning, the remotest departments of know- 
ledge, when the arcana of the Universe, hitherto 
undreamed of, are at every point unveiling them- 
selves to the wooings of Philosophy, and when the 
wondrous problem of human existence, in all things 
t'l-se, is being wrought out with such sublime results 
— why is it, that human intelligence and human for- 
tune are doomed to remain Kta'.ionary, in all that 
concerns government — in all that concerns politi- 
cal organization — matters confessedly so vital to the 
dignity and to the happiness of our race? Is it 
indeed true, that, in the midst of the light which 
flashes upon us fi-om the troubled and sanguinary 
drama of the South American republics, and in 
contempt of the voice of warning that comes up 
to us from the tombs of more than fiffy centuries 
— centuries whose inhabitants have lived and died 
in slavery and in sorrow — is it true, that in despite 



of all this, we are but children still, and that the 
nodding plume, the gleaming scimetar, and the 
"pride, pomp and circumstance of war," have still 
power to dazzle our worse than infantile vision, and 
hurry us on, as were hurried the nations of old, 
blindly and heedlessly, behind the chariot wheels 
of every Military Conqueror? If so, then indeed 
have our fatherslivedin vain; in vain, we ourselves 
do live; in vain "day unto day uttereth speech and 
night unto night sheweth knowledge," to our dull 
and unheeding ears! 

But, respond our Whig friends, we have elected 
General Harrison, a military cliieftain, to the Pre- 
sidency, and again we have elected General Tay- 
lor, a soldier without the slightest acquaintance 
with the duties of civil life, and still the RepubUc 
stands firmly upon its foundations. True, but hap- 
pily these foundations were laid so deeply by our 
fathers, that the "rains must descend, the floods 
come, and the winds blow and beat" long upon 
them, before the noble superstructure will be seen 
to totter. Again, it must not be forgotten, that in 
the dispensations of Providence, deemed by some 
a special intervention, both of these public servants 
were removed from the theatre of their earthly la- 
bors and responsibilities, soon after their election. 
But the evil has begun, and now, at the threshold, 
is the time for tlie wise and for the good, to resist 
it. Go to your dark rolling Mississippi, whose 
rushing floods, a world would scarce suffice to stay, 
and trace upward its resistless currents. As you 
ascend, league by league, the stream grows narrower 
and narrower, less and less deep and less turbid in its 
waters, and so you go onward and upward, through 
many a long and winding valley, and athwart many 
a lofty range of hills, until at length, the stream, 
ever dwindling, has shrunk now to a petty creek, 
and now a rivulet, and now a trickling rill, bubbling 
up before you, from some mountain side, a spark- 
ling little fountain — tranquil and gentle, a very syl- 
van gem, in which forest leaves and forest flowers, 
bathe and mirror themselves. Such is the origin 
and such is the progress of the mighty Mississippi 
— such is the beginning and such the onward and 
downward career of evil — such is the commence- 
ment and such the formation of the habits of men 
and of nations. It is the part of wisdom and of 
patriotism, as I have already intimated, to resist 
the beginnings of evil, nor wait as doth the. fool, 
until our hands and feet shall be trammeled, when 
resistance would be vain. Combat then, I would 
say to the American people, at every point and by 
every means, the introduction of a principle into 
your pontics, which, if all the voices of the past be 
not false, must, in the end, be fatal to the public 
liberties. Much evil has already been done, by 
the election of the chieftains referred to. We are 
rapidly rendering ourselves insensible to those sen- 
timents, which used to move upon us with electric 
power — we are approaching that state of stupor 
and of deadness, in which the people of South 
America are found, and like them, it is to be feared, 
we shall come in time, to regard the Presidency as 
a prize, which may be'legitimately won by the sword. 
Such, as I have shown you, was the distinct 
teaching of one of the Whig orators, at the Niagara 
celebration. Much evil, has moreover, been thus 
done, in discouraging the hopeful fiiends of free- 



15 



dom in other lauds. They are perplexed with 
doubts and difficulties, in regard to this question 
of self-government, to which we, happily, are 
strangers. They look to our example and con- 
tinued existence as a republic, as at once their vin- 
dication and their beacon light. But when they 
cast their eyes over the sea of tinic, there rises up 
before them, a rock, towering in height, rugged, 
precipitous and grim with its utter blackness — a 
rock whose base the billow ever laslieth, and around 
whose summit, the storms and the lightnings ever 
play. It is the rock of Military Power; and 
about that rock, for many a weary league, are 
gathered the wrecks and fragments of every free 
government on which the sun has risen. When 
therefore they behold our vessel of state, charged 
with the destinies of this republic, with all sails 
spread, bearing right down on this rock, they trem- 
ble and are filled with dismay. And on the other 
hand, be assured, that if to the examples cited, be 
added the election of General Scott, from the 
palaces of St. Petersburg, Vienna, Berlin, Naples 
and Madrid, the jewelled finger of regal scorn will 
be pointed at us, with the exclamation, "Behold 
the Model Republic, professing to be governed by 
great fundamental principles, already drunken 
with enthusiasm for military renown ! Behold her, 
going the way of all the republics of the earth, 
casting herself, her creed, her traditions and her 
glory, beneath the Juggernaut car of the Military 
Conqueror!" Many and many may be the centu- 
ries which shall pass over this green earth, before 
these words of scoffing shall fill on the aching 
heart of the American Democracy ! 

Can it be possible, that the American people will 
deliberately swallow a deadly poison, merely be- 
cause they are young and vigorous, and can resist 
for a long time, its certainly pernicious influences? 
Will they imitate the tormentors of the old world, 
who stretch their victims on the rack, and as the 
machine turns, and joint after joint is heard to 
■crack and to dislocate, the surgeon stands by the 
side of the sufferer, and feeling his pulse, reports 
how much more he can endure and live? Shall 
we thus deal with our institutions? Shall we 
stretch them upon the rack of torturing and fear- 
fully perilous experiments, and shall our own solici- 
tude, and our only enquiry be, how much more 
they can bear and not be overthrown? 

Let no man charge me with being the enemy of 
Gen. Scott, or with desiring, in any degree, to sully 
his hard-earned fame. To him, as to all who have 
served their country well, be every honor given, 
compatible with that country's safety. But can- 
dour obliges me to say, that I would rather this 
nation's treasury should be exhausted and thrown 
in one dazzling heap at his feet; rather that moiui- 
ments should be reared to him, whose summits 
should mingle with the skies; rather that at his 
coming, cities and States should rise up and call 
him blessed, and one loud acclaim ascend in his 
praise, from the shores of the Atlantic to those of 
the Pacific — rather, infinitely rather, that all 
this wealth, and honor and adulation should be 
lavished upon him, than that he should be elevated 
to the Chief Magistracy of the Republic, for whose 
duties he is so utterly disqualified, and thus es- 
iablish a precedent, fraught with interminable evil 



to us, and chilling with despondency, the friends 
of human rights throughout the world. 

At stated periods of the year, you are accus- 
tomed to listen to eloquent discourses, setting forth 
the inestimable value of our institutions and of the 
freedom which they secure; yet, there is reason to 
believe, that wc reflect but too httle upon these 
things, and have, at no time, a sufficiently hearty 
and exalted appreciation of the privileges which 
we enjoy. It is not for the robust to know the 
value of health, but for him who languisheth upon 
a bed of disease. The demon of practical op- 
pression has never crossed your pathway — you 
have never felt his icy and withering gripe. With 
you, human despotism, is but a nursery tale. Its 
grim and phantom form may have served to amuse 
or startle your childhood's hours, and ai-ound 
your fireside of a winter's night, the story of its 
atrocities may, many a time, have stirred your 
manly spirits to indignation; but most of you, liave 
never been in those foreign lands, where this story 
is so livingly and fearfully realized. You have not 
entered the dungeons of Europe, and beheld them 
crowded with patriots, whose only crime is, that 
they loved the land that gave them birth, better 
than the tyrants that despoiled it. You have never 
been on board of those prision-ships, which from 
time to time, leave European shores, transporting 
these patriots by multitudes, a tliousand leagues 
across the sea, and casting them upon inhospitable 
coasts, where, far from kindred and country, in 
poverty and brokenness of heart, they lay them- 
selves down to die. You have never examined 
those instruments of torture, to be found in the 
prisons of the old world, and still but too often 
used, on which every arm that strikes a blow for 
human rights, is liable to be wrung and broken. — 
You have not walked through European capitals, 
and seen them filled with the spies of the Gov- 
ernment, pursuing your footsteps to evei-y place of 
business and of pleasure, noting your minutest ac- 
tions and catching with greedy ears, the bi eathings of 
your most secret thoughts. If you had lookrd up- 
on this picture, you might have some appreciation 
of your own political blessings, and of what, un- 
happily, other nations are deprived. But you may 
learn something of the value of these blessings, 
by what they cost — the blood of, as I verily be- 
lieve, the noblest band of martyrs that ever drew 
a sword or put their trust in the God of battles. — 
It was not gold or silver or precious stones that 
bought them — they are altogether above the price 
of the treasure that perisheth. Could the inhabi- 
tants of Spain, of Italy, of Austria and of Russia, 
coin your California mines into one great offer ing, 
and lay it humbly at the feet of their Kings and 
Princes, they could not i)urchase from them, one 
free press, nor could they, with all that gold, buy 
the privilege of holding one such public meeting 
as we hold here to-nigiit. You may estimate the 
worth of these blessings also, by what the good 
and the truly great of all climes and ages, have 
been willing to pay for them. Open again the 
volume of History, and you will find, that in puf 
suit of these blessings, which, though piecious 
above rubies, you enjoy as the common air, the 
patriotic and philanthropic, the true lovers of their 
land and of their race, h""" ever been ready to 



IG 






pacrifico thoir time, their toll and their fortune; for 
them, they have submitted to wander in exile, the 
victims of remorseless persecution, homeless and 
fiiendless; they have lived in the caves of the earth, 
and in the gorges of the mountains; they have 
defied chains and prisons and racks and the curl- 
ing flames of the stake, and from age to age, in 
Ttncounted millions, have poured out their blood 
like water, and bleached with their bones a thou- 
Band battlefields. And yet, these blessings, they 
have not had! You have them, but you have them, 
if I may be allowed the use of the hallowed meta- 
phor, "in earthen vessels." You have them in in- 
stitutions partaking of the frailty which belongs to 
all that is of earth — -institutions fated at every mo- 
ment of their precarious existence, to find in the 
selfishness and guilty ambitionof the human heart, 
enemies that never slumber, that never grow weary. 

Let the Democracy then be vigilant, strong in 
faith, resolute in purpose. Let them not, under a 
momentary impulse of gratitude or of admiration 
for militiiry renown, plant a tree, which, though 
slow in growth, it may be, must bring forth fruit, 
evil and altogether evil. The acorn has germi- 
nated, but is still beneath the heel of the Ameri- 
can people, and may be crushed; if nurtured by 
their folly and the folly of their descendants, a 
century hence, it may be an oak whose knarled 
truak and spreading branches, will mock at the 
tempest! This truly appalling military power, now 
presents itself tows, clothed with its most intoxi- 
cating witcheries. But we know not, fellow- 
citizens, we know not, what we worship. The 
Prophet of Khorassan wears, as yet, for us, his 
glittering veil; and may that God who led our 
flithers through the paths of the revolution, grant, 
in his infinite mercy, that this nation may never 
be called to stand, stricken and cowering, beneath 
the terrific glances of that power, when the veil, 
which now shrouds its frightful form and features, 
shall have been torn away forever. 

Our Whig friends often ask us, how is it possible 
that we can be enthusiastic in the support of such 
a man as Gen. Pierce, and they really seem to en- 
tertain a most amiable apprehension, lest we should 
get into a towering excitement about, what they 
profess to regard as very small matters, and thus 
render ourselves ridiculous! I must confess, that 
I believe them sincere, in the surprise which they 
express, at the tides of Democratic feeling that 
arc swelling around them, and that they are alto- 
gether unable to explain this state of things. In 
Whig priufiplcs, it is lamentably true, that there 
is nothing, absolutely nothing, to excite human en- 
thusiasm. It is a creed, whose dwelling place is 
within the arctic circle of the moral world. Hence, 
its votaries have been driven to rely on Tippecanoe 
and the Thames, log cabins, hard cider, "coons," 
ekinned and unskinned, Monterey, Buena Vista 
and Cerro Gordo. These are the themes over 
which Whig or:itor3 grow eloquent, in glorification 
of which Whig poets sing, and in the contempla- 
tion and discussion of which, the Whig .msses en- 
deavor to persuade themselves that they er.joy a 
Bpecies of elation, which they call enthusiasm. 
Now, although, in the ataiidess public and private 
lif • of Gen Pierce, in the inflexibility and loyalty, 
with which he has devoted himself to the constitu- 



tion and the Union, and in his eminent civil and 
military services, there is much and quite enough, 
to move us to ardour in his support, yet, none of 
these things mingle at all, as an element, in that 
volume of excitement, which is sweeping over the 
land, as a conflagration borne on the wings of the 
hurricane, sweeps over the prairies of the West. 
No, fellow-citizens; it is the Democratic creed, 
which is the electric battery, that is sending the 
thrill of its inspirations along every nerve of the 
National Democratic heart. It is altogether natural 
that it should be so; indeed, it could not be otherwise. 
For he who studies and understands your princi- 
ples, who appreciates them and dwells, as it were, 
in their midst, whose soul is steeped in those princi- 
ples, it is just as natural that that soul should glow 
with enthusiasm, as that the edges of the storm 
cloud, should glow and flash with the hghtnings 
which are sleeping in its bosom. Yes, he who ex- 
amines the Democratic faith, in all its length and 
breadth and depth, who comprehends its all pervad- 
ing philanthropic sympathies, its supreme triumph 
over the hoary headed errors of the past, the gran- 
deur with which it seeks to clothe the character 
of man, and catches those visions of glory with 
which, in prophetic spirit, it sweeps the horizon of 
the future — to expect that he, surrendered up to 
inspirations like these, should be without enthusi- 
asm, is to expect that he could stand upon the Ta- 
ble Rock, and be unmoved, amid the dashing cat- 
aracts and pealing thunders of Niagara. We are 
enthusiastic, and right well do we know, 'the rea- 
son of the hope that is within us,' and whence 
springeth the fire that kindles our spirits. Let us 
not then be alarmed or ashamed, at the jeerings 
of our Whig friends. With their cause, with their 
practices, we have nothing, we desire to have noth- 
ing in common. We are emphatically "children 
of the day" and upon the waving folds of our ban- 
ner, is pencilled in letters of sunshine, the en- 
chanted word, which is stirring the moral world 
to its deepest foundations — that word is pro- 
gress. Let us not seek then, to chill our- 
selves down to the temperature of those, who, 
worshipping the past and living for the pres- 
ent, shrink, like children in the dark, from every 
hand, as spectral and boding, that would break the 
seals which lock from us, the teeming fountains of 
the future. The effort would be vain; for Whig- 
ery is, at best, but a sluggish stream, which niakes 
its way onward, struggling and slow, amid the 
deep valleys — now looking up tremblingly to the 
sun, and now hiding itself stealthily beneath the 
soil — but Democracy is an Alpine torrent, which, 
wild with its own native freshness and vigor, is ever 
leaping fiom precipice to precipice, fascinating the 
world with the music of its roar, and dazzling it by 
the rainbows which overarch its pathway. Such is 
our cause, about which come thronging all that is 
enkindling in human hope and all that is grand in 
this earth's patriotism and philanthropy. In it, we 
do and well may glory. To it, we may give, not 
merely our profoundest convictions, but our labor, 
our fortunes, our love. In its behalf, we may, 
without a blush, indulge the gushings of the wild- 
est enthusiasm, and before the world, clap our 
hands for very joy, in anticipation of its victories. 



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